Calcutta, May 11: In an ambitious move to create a national broadband footprint, Chennai-based internet service provider Dishnet DSL has entered into an agreement with SingTel and Bharti Telesonic for the biggest bandwidth acquisition in the country.

Dishnet has bought 622 MBPS of bandwidth from SingTel for its international internet traffic with Singapore as the regional hub to route its internet traffic.

The bandwidth will ride the i2i (India to International) backbone that links Singapore to Chennai and Mumbai through a 3,200-km undersea cable. i2i is a joint venture between Bharti Group and SingTel.

The ISP has also acquired the same amount of bandwidth from Bharti Telesonic to cater to its broadband services. DDSL will use this bandwidth to rollout its services in new locations across the country.

“Our aim is to be an ISP’s ISP,” says Kapil Dhatigan, senior manager, marketing and broadband. “The acquisition will make us the single largest bandwidth provider in the country. While some of it will serve our own requirements, the remaining will be sold to other ISPs.” Prior to the agreement with SingTel and Bharti, Dishnet had 230 MBPS of bandwidth.

The internet service provider presently has 25,000 digital-subscriber line (DSL) users in the country. This is expected to quadruple by the year-end to 1 lakh. The company has around 2.5 lakh dial-up subscribers across 200 cities.

“We will also focus on expanding the internet hub centres from 100 to 1,000 within the next six months through the franchisee route. These centres, which offer the latest in online applications like gaming and distance learning, will also utilise part of the bandwidth,” explains Kapil.

The dial-up, DSL and hub centres cater to all sections of customers requiring an access to the Net. Another area of focus for the ISP is the Helloworld internet calling cards that have built-in internet connectivity to facilitate anytime, anywhere access.

Keeping in line with global trends of joint projects between telecom companies and ISPs, Dishnet is planning co-location agreements with basic service providers to use their infrastructure for the last mile connectivity.

It has entered into an infrastructure sharing agreement with Tata Teleservices (TTSL). The move will help Dishnet ride on Tata Tele’s vast backbone to offer DSL service to corporate customers.

Tata Teleservices, on the other hand, will be able to use Dishnet’s underground fibre to provide service in Tamil Nadu where it is still awaiting clearance to lay its cable network.